Messed up built in partitions

I bought this Samsung laptop with a built in Windows 8.

It only had one usable partition on the disk, i.e. C: drive

But I wanted a separate partition for my data, while having OS on C: drive

So I installed a partition manager, (EaseUS Partition Master, as far as I remember)

I created a separate partition D:

I wasn't satisfied with the allocated size of the new drive, so I tried to extend it, but then I realized I was having few partitions (without any drive letters) in between drive C and D; and extension could only be made to an adjacent partition!

Out of frustration I deleted one of those partitions in between.

I guess it was a recovery partition, having size of few GBs.

Now I want to know where do I stand and how much am I messed up!

And how safe is it to delete the remaining of those partitions?

I have attached current screenshots.

partition 1 - 2 are system partitions

4 was created by windows 8.1 upgrade and really is not needed because you have REMOVED the factory recovery image partition


4 is almost a dup of 1 partition except it has 8.1 re tools

Would you mind to upload screenshot in partition manager ( maybe EaseUS Partition Master )
"extension could only be made to an adjacent partition!" Just disk management limit that. You don't need to delete any partitions EaseUS Partitions Master allows you freely drag partitions to move unallocated space. If you plan to extend D: partitions, firstly ensure there is enough unallocated space (if not, you can shrink others partitions to produce unallocated space ), then move the unallocated space close to Dartitions, you can extend.
About the deleted partitions, if you want to get back, you can click Wizard -> partition recovery wizard to recover the deleted partitions.

The few partitions (without any drive letters) don't take much size, you can just keep it.
Here is the youtube of how to extend the non-adjacent partition.

KYHI said:

partition 1 - 2 are system partitions

4 was created by windows 8.1 upgrade and really is not needed because you have REMOVED the factory recovery image partition


4 is almost a dup of 1 partition except it has 8.1 re tools

Click to expand...

I see. So it's safe to delete partition 4

Tommy456 said:

Just disk management limit that. You don't need to delete any partitions EaseUS Partitions Master allows you freely drag partitions to move unallocated space

Click to expand...

Didn't know that. Messed up in Disk Management and ended up using EaseUS.

Tommy456 said:

If you plan to extend D: partitions, firstly ensure there is enough unallocated space (if not, you can shrink others partitions to produce unallocated space ), then move the unallocated space close to D: partitions, you can extend.

Click to expand...

Well I've already done that. Was just worried about those extra partitions.

Tommy456 said:

The few partitions (without any drive letters) don't take much size, you can just keep it.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately realized this a little late!

Tommy456 said:

Here is the youtube of how to extend the non-adjacent partition.

Click to expand...

Learned it the hard way! Thanks


I've attached the screenshot; was a little curious about the highlighted part!

Tommy456 said:

About the deleted partitions, if you want to get back, you can click Wizard -> partition recovery wizard to recover the deleted partitions.

Click to expand...

Tried this, but it's unable to detect any deleted partitions.
Maybe it's because I added up that freed up space to my D: partition.

Any other solution to have back a recovery partition?
Or am I just left with deleting that remaining partition, i.e. partition 4?

Now that you've killed your recovery partition - which I'm going to do myself shortly - You could learn the art of imaging your C drive and save it to your Data drive. What you then do when you need to recover you put a boot disk in and put your image back to C with it. Your image can always be up to date and recovery only need 15-20 minutes. I've got my C drive down-sized to 50gb; the rest is data apart from the small boot drives which I will leave alone. Ask hear about Macrium Reflect. If you ever feel like starting from scratch you can get a W8.1 iso to make a bootable DVD or USB stick from MS. I've been doing this for the last 5 years. If you can stretch to it it's good to have a couple of images on a USB external Drive or stick as emergency backups to be really bomb-proof.

You might really want to get you original recovery partition back but all is not lost if it can't be done.

Hello,

Just throwing my opinion here,

Samsung is a good company and I'm sure they have their drivers on the samsung webpage you can download. So with that knowledge, forget all your factory recovery options and just learn to image your hard disk with macrium reflect or etc.

that way you can do what you want with your hard drive like you are just trying to right now anyway.

especially if you have ssd, it's probably not as fun with a HDD.. (which you have.. -cause slower.)

"I've attached the screenshot; was a little curious about the highlighted part!" That's unallocated space.

" Tried this, but it's unable to detect any deleted partitions.
Maybe it's because I added up that freed up space to my D: partition. " Maybe that's the reason we couldn't find back the recovery partitions with Partition Master.
If the recovery partitions is very important, you can try Windows "Backup and restore" back to the certain history point of your computer.

Sorry, what's all I know. Hope others members can help you.

Hmmmm, learned new things.

Thanks to all of you,

My Windows 7 Pro has a tiny sliver of "unallocated space," which is to be left alone. Does Windows 8 also do that? I'd like to learn more about this.

The disk space which isn't partitioned is unallocated space. It is nothing to do with Windows system, so Windows 8 may exist the unallocated space. We can add the unallocated space to other partitions, and disk management, easeus partitions master can do that. But we have to delete one partition with disk management, then create the new partition with the unallocated space. With Partition Master, we can directly resize unallocated space or partitions.

RolandJS said:

My Windows 7 Pro has a tiny sliver of "unallocated space," which is to be left alone. Does Windows 8 also do that? I'd like to learn more about this.

Click to expand...

I had about 17 GBs unallocated space on mine & merged it with my C drive making it bigger using the ---

MiniTool Partition Manager Software for Windows PC and Server

It was easy to do with help from Brink.
& Popeye.

Here is the link to my thread---

http://www.eightforums.com/installation-setup/53322-how-merge-partitions.html

Here is a video too---

[video=youtube;WXJvAo4j7V0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXJvAo4j7V0[/video]

RolandJS said:

My Windows 7 Pro has a tiny sliver of "unallocated space," which is to be left alone. Does Windows 8 also do that? I'd like to learn more about this.

Click to expand...

Hi,

If I understand you correctly,

Unless you or a very specific program did that, I can see no reason you should have that on your C: (windows) partition.. here is mine.. and all my previous windows have always only had the usual "hidden" partitions. Never a Unallocated space..